Historic Locations in Bromley-By-Bow

"History has always been a hybrid form of knowledge, syncretizing past and present,
memory and myth, the written record and the spoken word. Its subject matter is promiscuous......
As a form of communication history finds expression not only in chronicle and commentary but
also ballad and song, legends and proverbs, riddles and puzzles."

Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory

1. Bromley-by-Bow

Bromley-by-Bow is an ancient parish in the borough of Tower Hamlets. Its name derives from the
meadows that were full of brambles, Brembel lega, then Brembelega - Bramble meadow land.
Once a rural village with a pond and village green it now bears a scattering of
tower blocks. These appear as the poor relatives of the swanky Canary Wharf that sports
a flashing pyramid and dominates the sky line to the South. However, inspite of appearances, Bromley-by-Bow hides many surprising secrets.

2. Some Local Folk Tales

Queen Matilda, the wife of Henry 1st in around 1110, was said to have been
involved in an unpleasant incident when she was nearly drowned while crossing the old ford on
the River Lea. She immediately ordered a bridge be built to save her from any such future
re-occurrences as she was a frequent visitor to Barking Abbey. Local people no doubt
prospered considerably as a result of this initiative and the bowed bridge gave its
name to the locality, Brambles by Bow [Bridge].

One of the most famous stories connected to the area of Bromley-By-Bow is to
do with Bow Bells. What makes it all the more interesting is the controversy that surrounds the
location of the true Bow Bells, which legend says Dick Whittington heard from Highgate
Hill, sometime in the 1370s. Rosemary Taylor, the historian, makes a strong case for the
local church of St Mary on Bow Road. The black cat of Whittington was the nickname for coal barges that came from the north and docked near the City of London. Whittington realised he could save a couple of days transport by bringing his black cats up the river Lea, and off load them near St Marys, and transport them the final miles by horse and cart. Thus he started to earn the fortune that eventually would make him Lord Mayor of London.

Chaucer's Prioress hailed from St Leonards Priory, Bromley by Bow, as told in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales:

Ther was also a nonne, a prioresse,
That of hir smylyng was ful symple and coy;
Hire gretteste ooth was but by seinte loy;
And she was cleped madame eglentyne.
Ful weel she soong the service dyvyne,Entuned in hir nose ful semely,
And frenssh she spak ful faire and fetisly, After the scole of stratford atte bowe,
For frenssh of parys was to hire unknowe.

Bromley-By-Bow was one of the ancient Tower Hamlets required by law in the 16th century
to provide yeomen for the Tower of London. In the early 17th century it became home to King James I who built a palace and Scottish settlement. When he grew tired of the English at Westminster, he would retire to this small peaceful village. James I is widely believed to have been a freemason and this gives some further mystique to the area, as do the tunnels that are said to date to this time connecting the Palace, the Settlement and the Priory.

The river Lea next to Bromley-by-Bow has fair claim to have been at the forefront of the industrial revolution. Because it was too small of a site to go on to develop heavy industry, it has been forgotten as a claimant for our industrial origins. In fact there were more tidal mills collected on the Lea than
on any other river anywhere in the world, plus many windmills. Here was produced the first commercially
successful industrial bone china, known as Bow China. Also manufactured was gunpowder and silk. The original formulae for these products
had been closely guarded by the Chinese over many centuries. Their production on the Lea may be connected to the East India Company,
whose dock was a few miles further south at the mouth of the Lea.

Local historian Rosemary Taylor has designed a "Bromley St Leonards Walk" on which she kindly
took members of Kingsley Hall. Her words were recorded and a transcript is now available.
Rosemary has also prepared a written document of her research.

The River Lea traditionally marks the boundary between Middlesex and Essex . As it winds
through marshland to the Thames its course has been variously altered to meet the needs of
defence, transport and industry. For King Alfred its varied flooding branches provided
protection from the invading Danes, a method reconsidered by the Duke of York, who had a
huge sluice gate designed for Four Mills that would create an artificial moat against the
invasion of Napoleon. In the same campaign William Congreve was building rockets to be
launched across the channel at the French foe. Already by Domesday the tidal flow was
being used for the milling of corn that was baked into bread in Stratford for the ever
growing population of London. The millstones would later grind gunpowder for the Elizabethans
and distillers grain for the Hanoverians.

Bow Bridge was built around 1110 after Queen Matilda, the wife of Henry I, was on her way
to Barking Abbey. Her entourage got caught in the ford waters of the Lea and the Queen
was nearly drowned near Stratford ("street of the ford"). The bridge that was built had an
arched construction and its appearance gave the name to the area on the City side, Bow.
This incident is recorded in the nursery rhyme "Skip to the Lee my Lady".

Bow Bridge is now completely disguised by the roundabout and flyover above it. It is the
fourth bridge built there, a very ordinary flat concrete bridge that can be seen from the
River Lee Navigation.

The Benedictine nunnery was for a prioress and nine nuns and dedicated to St.Leonard and had
been founded by William, Bishop of London, in the time of William the Conqueror. After King
Henry VIII's dissolution of the nunnery the church, manor and rectories of Bromley were
granted to Sir Ralph Sadler, a Privy-Counsellor. It was returned to the crown after 6 years.
Elizabeth in her 15th year of reign granted it to Ric Pickman and in her 28th year to Ambrose
Willoughby. James I in his 7th year of reign granted it to Francis Morrice and Francis
Philips. The Lord of the Manor in 1635, Sir John Jacob, demolished the converted Priory
buildings and built a new manor house. This became known as Bromley School or Bromley Manor
House Academy at the beginning of the 19th century just before it too was demolished.

The priory included the chancel of the Church of St Leonards Convent, in Chaucer the "Scole
of Stratford atte bowe". Huguenot refugees in the C17-C18, merchant princes of their time,
built their tombs in the churchyard and these are still there. Much of the site passed out
of ecclesiastical control by 1819 and was used for Workers' housing. The Chancel was altered
and rebuilt in 1843 as the Parish Church of St Mary with St Leonard. It was one of the few
Saxon buildings left in London and also retained Saxon artifacts and additional Norman
features. The Church is still remembered by people in the area but it got directly hit in
the war and entirely destroyed. In 1969 the Northern Approach Road was built over the Church
and most of the old grounds. All that is now left is part of the boundary wall, a Memorial
Gate to the Rev G A How erected in 1894, and a small part of the graveyard that served
unsuccessfully as a children's playground in the 1990s.

In the 13th century inhabitants of Stratford, Bow and Old Ford had to travel all the way to
St Dunstans in Stepney to attend Church. In bad weather this could make quite a journey.
To bring relieve a license to build a Chapel of Ease was obtained from Edward II and the
Bishop of London in 1311 to build a new church "in the King's highway". It was erected
in the reign of Edward III. Money still had to be provided for the repair of the mother
church and following a dispute in 1497 the people of Bow promised to acknowledge themselves
still parishioners of Stepney and their chapel subject to the jurisdiction of the Stepney
Church. They also agreed to attend Stepney twice a year for the Feast of St Dunstan and
the 3rd holy day in Whitsun. The Southwest aisle and the main tower structure are 15th
century and the vestry is 16th century. The Font dates from Henry V's time and the organ
from 1551.

The civil war finally intruded on peoples lives in Bow in 1648 when Colonel Whalley and the
"Ironsides" tried to take a Royalist Party camped on Stratford Green. The Cavaliers
attacked and drove Whalley back to Mile End but were opposed by the people of Bow who were
forced to retreat into Bow Church. Surrounded by soldiers the people were induced out and
forced to take an oath they would never fight the king's men again.

In 1719 St Mary's became a parish in its own right. A fire in April 1747 damaged the tower
and destroyed the clock. After a Bill of parliament, 1825 surrounding buildings were
demolished and the burial ground enlarged, the last burial being in 1854. During a storm
in January 1829 the tower fell down from disrepair and was not rebuilt until 1898. The
tower fell a third time during a heavy bomb blasting in May 1941. The bells did not ring
out again until 1952 the rebuild couldn't use the original stone so was made of redbrick
surmounted by a small white cupola and four-faced clock.

The church now has a Loos cross brought back from the battlefield of the Great war with a
War Memorial with the names of those from Bromley who were killed.

The Old Palace is connected with King James I who is supposed to have founded a settlement
in the parish and built himself a hunting lodge in 1606. The Seven Stars was of the same
period and could have been for servants, retainers, domestic offices and outhouses or
according to a deed it was a Freemason's lodge. King James was certainly a Freemason of
the Scottish rite being initiated into the Lodge of Scoon and Perth in 1601 two years
before becoming the first Stuart king of England. The Royal manors were settled by a Scotch
Colony who brought with them foreign craftsmenship of plaster ceilings. These were probably
the Armada heroes who were also said to have come and settled.

In 1750 the Palace was divided into two residences, and for about a century was used as a day
and boarding school and sometimes as residences. In the 1840s the occupier was Samuel Felix
Edward Needham who maintained a school. He was followed by Mr Woodin the painter. In 1874
Messrs Hemingway purchased the Palace property from G.G. Rutty. The London School Board
purchased the building and demolished it in 1893-4. The Seven Stars was demolished in 1895.
In the process there was an outcry from around London and under the guidance of C.R. Ashbee,
architect and founder of the Guild of Handicraft, the ground floor state room was salvaged
and re-erected in the Victoria and Albert museum where it can still be visited. The motto
over the main fireplace says "Better Is a Dinner of Herbs Where Love Is." Ashbee went on
to found the Survey of London, the first volume of which is on Bromley-By-Bow.

"It is useless to cry over spilt milk, but if the destruction of what, in a sense, was the
finest building in East London did nothing else, it at least awakened the public conscience
and was the immediate cause of the founding of the committee for the survey of the Memorials
of Greater London.... We now have on the site of King James' Palace a well built Board
School, and by well built I mean of course built in accordance with all the ordinary
regulations, sanitary, solid, grey, grim, and commonplace. What we might have had with a
little thought, and with no extra expense to the rates, would have been an ideal Board
School with a record of every period of English history from the time of Henry VIII as a
daily object lesson for the líttle citizens of Bromley, a school-house that contained
panelling of James I, carving of William III, the modelled plasterwork of the Scotch
craftsmen of the early Jacobean time, rooms all the more gracious for the sumptuous
additions of the later Stuarts, records of the time of Queen Anne, fireplaces, overmantels,
and panelling of the Georges, Adam's work, and the black and white marble flooring laid down
by the time of the expansion of London in the beginning of this century, ...a school-house to
be proud of. When we see records of this kind at Eton, at Harrow, at Haileybury, we say how
blessed are our English public schools to have such a historic background for our sons to
grow up amongst. It perhaps does not occur to us that to the little Board school child,
who surely needs it much more than the sons of our aristocracy or our bourgeoisie, such
historic associations are infinitely more necessary, more valuable, more refining. 1I
know of few records at any of our great public schools, that would come up to what the
London School Board here destroyed..."

At the present junction with Stroudley Walk was the old village green that was surrounded
by inns and shops and still had stocks and a whipping post until the middle of the
nineteenth century. In February 1913 Sylvia Pankhurst started her Bow campaign at the
village green with a speech and by smashing the window of Selby and Sons the funeral
directors with a brick. There was also a drinking fountain, a gas lamp and a horse
trough and an "Obelisk" which perhaps referred to the fountain. Looking from the green
could be seen a fine row of shops with the Priory visible in the distance.
The County Council's clearance programme of the 1930s and the World War II Blitz has
destroyed nearly all the history from previous centuries. The old green is a covered
walkway called Stroudley Walk. A pub here, the Rose and Crown, does date to 172? and at
the far end there is a Memorial Gate in memory of Reverand G A How, erected in 1894 and
leading to the remains of the Priory churchyard.

The first Almshouses were left to the Drapers Company in the will of Sir John Jollies in
1621 and would have been surrounded by fields.. In 1706 Mr John Edmanson, sail-maker,
used Sir Christopher Wren's office to have built a chapel and four additional bays of
accommodation which is what remains today. In 1858 a lodge was built on the fourth side
forming an entire quadrangle with the 44 almshouses and the chapel. In 1867 an Act of
Parliament enabled the site to be bought by the North London Railway Company. The tenants
were moved to Tottenham and most of the site was razed eventually leaving the original
centrepiece flanked by 4 almshouses.

The railway did not use the site for long and tenants moved back in until the 1950s after
which the site became derelict. The GLC took control and with Oxford House Housing Association
rebuilt the almshouses in 1982. The roof was saved and most of the front elevation, but the
back wall and a side wall had to be rebuilt from the foundations. The Almshouses offer an
example of early "public" housing.

Located just the other side of the Bow flyover on the Bow Back River in Essex. The site was
only two hundred yards from Bow Bridge and much nearer Bow and Bromley than to Stratford.
Patents were taken out for manufacture of "ware" superior to china or porcelain in 1744 by
Edward Heylyn, a merchant and glassblower and Thomas Frye a painter and engraver. The
factory is mentioned in the 1748 edition of Defoe's "A Tour of Great Britain" although the
original site is uncertain and could have been in Bow proper. The third member of the team
was Alderman George Arnold, a haberdasher. Arnold died in 1751, Heylyn became bankrupt in
1757 and Frye retired in 1759 although the factory continued until 1776. The factory was
called New Canton and architecturally modelled on the Cantonese warehouses of the East
India company. At one point there were 300 people working in the factory and it certainly
was at the forefront of the retrospectively named industrial revolution. This was the first
purpose built porcelain factory in England and it brought a complete change in eating habits
of the poor who had previously used wooden dishes and maybe earthenware. As well as "the
more ordinary sort of ware" there were also finer works and figurines.

Founded in 1866 with the Church of Our Lady with St Catherine's built as a chapel that would
become the main Catholic church in the area. The nuns left during the War and the nunnery
is now used by artists and includes a downstairs exhibition space. The park has a war
memorial and is on part of the site of Grove Park Hall that was owned by the Byas family and
run as a lunatic asylum in the nineteenth century.

Erected by Theordore Bryant in 1882, this monument to Gladstone is one of the few statues
erected while the person was still alive. The statue was splashed with red paint in 1988
as a tribute to the Match girls. It was recently cleaned but has again had red paint
thrown its way. This red paint apparently due to a story told by Annie Besant that the
match girls "paid for this with our blood." However local historian Rosemary Taylor has
ascertained that the original bloodletting took place before the statue was ever erected.
Opposite the present Bow Rd DLR there was a very large drinking fountain that had been
erected in 1872 commemorating the abolition of the proposed match tax. Bryant and May
had threatened to pass the tax on to their workers so the government stood down. When the
tax was defeated Bryant and May got all of their workers to pay a shilling towards the
fountain and the women cut their wrists in protest.

Sylvia Pankhurst and her American colleague, Zelie Emerson, took over a baker's shop on
198 Bow Rd, opposite Bow Church, and in October 1912 set up the first East London branch
of the Women's Social and Political Union. The sign on the front read in gold leaf:
"Votes for Women". George Lansbury's son Willie Lansbury arranged for wood from the
Lansbury wood factory to be used to build a wooden platform outside the shop and from
which Sylvia would address the passing crowds. "I regarded the rousing of the East End
as of utmost importance.... The creation of a woman's movement in that great abyss of
poverty would be a call and a rallying cry to the rise of similar movements in all parts
of the country." (Sylvia Pankhurst quoted from "In Letters of Gold")

The shop is long gone but the site on which it was built is now developed as a
garden by Wilfred Housing Cooperative.

This is the first Childrens House in the United Kingdom and was built for Muriel and Doris Lester, designed by Charles Cowles Voysey and opened in 1923 by H.G.Wells. Originally there were rooms for the volunteers to live in. The still existing flat roof balcony was specifically designed for the children to play safely and get sunshine on them. The Lester sisters also had UV lights installed to counter the rickets prevalent in their time. Now the surrounding houses have all been knocked down and there is plenty of sunshine at ground level too. The building is presently run by the Council and is still well used. Inside the charming open plan ground floor children's room there is a long mural by Eve Garnett showing the children walking out of the East End and into the countryside.

One of the main centres of focus for any local history trail, Kingsley Hall is a grade two
listed building also designed by Charles Cowles Voysey, in 1928. Voysey senior had been famous in the Arts and Crafts movement and Kingsley Hall picks up many modernist themes. It was built under the instruction of the two Lester sisters Muriel and Doris and named after their brother Kingsley who had died a young man in 1915. Kingsley was very supportive of his sisters' community work and he left them his inheritance, to further their aims, and which went towards creating the first Kingsley Hall, a converted wooden chapel that was destroyed during the Second World War. The money for this second Kingsley Hall came from Muriel's father, Henry, a shipping magnate. The building's two most famous inhabitants have been Mahatma Gandhi and RD Laing.

This was one of the first modernist town halls, opened by George Lansbury, December 3rd,
1938. Inside the building there is an illustration mural of five symbolic builders by David Evans. This is repeated as a relief on the outside. Also to be seen from outside is a mural of the local area under
the overhang of the porch. Unfortunately the large theatre inside was replaced by housing at the turn of the century.